Borders circles the drain

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Borders Group Inc. was halting payments to some suppliers, and that one publisher had stopped shipping books to Borders.  The end is near.  As we discussed in an earlier post, if trade creditors lose faith in a company,...

Top 10 Credit Topics of 2010

Here’s our list of the top 10 topics on the minds of credit professionals in 2010: 10) Risk Management – We’ve written many times this year about risk management, both good and bad.  Whether it was BP and operational risk, suppliers dealing with...

Lehman’s Worst Offense: Risk Management

Last post, we argued that Lehman’s Repo 105 balance-sheet-management tactic was not the worst thing Lehman Brothers did on its way to extinction. Volume 8 of Anton Vakulas’s Bankruptcy Examiner’s report details a bunch of blunders with far more serious consequences....

Lehman Brothers: What’s All the Fuss About?

A few weeks ago, the world was shocked to learn that Lehman Brothers was guilty of “window dressing” its balance sheet throughout 2007 and 2008. As the New York Times’ Dealbook put it, ”In Lehman’s Demise, Some Shades of Enron.” The outrage is based on information in...

Character is Destiny — Especially on the Downside

What do Calisto Tanzi, Bernie Ebbers, and Edward Groves have in common? Several things, actually.   For one, they all ran major companies. Tanzi was CEO of Parmalat, an Italian food company; Ebbers was CEO of WorldCom, an American telecommunications firm; and Groves...